Losing Grip
by me.fergie
Summary: SF to Avril Lavigne's "Losing Grip". Set in 8.23. Spoilers for Nailed, WISC, Time bomb and various other episode. They are never there when he is scared.


Hellou everyone. This is my long overdue one shot centering around 8.23. A Ryan centric episode... I had to do something. Just becauseagain the focus was NOT ENOUGH on him. So, here we go.

Thanks go again to my wonderful beta reader DF95. Get well soon. Colds are nasty.

**Disclaimer: I don't own CSI Miami or its characters. Neither do I own Losing grip. It belongs to the lovely Avril Lavigne. I'm just borrowing it for mine and your entertainment, without making any profit apart from happiness that comes from writing. **

* * *

**Losing grip**

Bars. Everywhere he looked. Bars. It wasn't really a brand new sight. He had seen the bars before. The only difference was that this time, they were everywhere. Around him. He was actually behind bars. It was him sitting in the holding cell, not some random murderer or rapist. _Murderer or rapist… is that what I have become? Is that who they compare me to? _He hadn't done anything. _Will they believe me?_

Ryan Wolfe doubted it. He had believed it was all a bad dream, a real nightmare from hell; his team trashing his house, Stetler interrogating him, being handcuffed and led to the holding cell. It was only when he saw the looks in the eyes of his team, when he felt the cold bars against the naked skin of his arms that he realized that it was NOT a nightmare. It was reality. It was fucking reality. He closed his eyes and rested his back against the bars. He was not a natural pessimist, but the way his team had looked at him made him doubt he would make it out of this. Hell, what had happened, anyway? Okay, so the team had followed the GPS chip back to his house. Somebody had driven the bomb car to the crime scene, and had used his house as a starting point. Then they had combed his place, and Delko, of all people, had come up with the missing diamonds from that case a few weeks ago. As he thought back on it, it still felt like somebody had kicked him right in the guts. He had known from Delko's look that Delko didn't trust him. Figures. After that incident last year, he had never managed to regain Delko's trust. But Calleigh's reaction had hurt him the most. "I don't know," she had said when he had asked whether she believed him. She didn't know? She'd been working with him for 5 years. Yes, he had betrayed her trust as well when… well, last year. But hell, she had seen that something wasn't right. The missing tooth, the cut on his lip… Why hadn't she understood? She really thought it was possible he killed Rebecca Nevins.

**Are you aware of what  
You make me feel, ****(baby)  
Right now I feel invisible to you  
Like I'm not real **

He felt like crap. Did he really, at some point in the last five years, give his team the impression that he was able to KILL someone? Hell, he had killed once in those five years, he had shot _a criminal_. Okay, his team might not trust him completely, which was also due to their own blindness, but hell, there was a difference between slowing down an investigation and killing an innocent person! And if they had only once taken their time to look at him, to ask him why he had done it, they wouldn't believe he was capable of killing. But no, Calleigh and Delko were much too occupied with themselves to notice something was wrong with him. In fact, he felt invisible to them.

**Didn't you feel me lock  
My arms ar****ound you  
Why'd you turn away?**

He wondered when exactly they had all turned against him. He remembered his first case. He had helped Calleigh's dad. He had helped, and she was thankful. Yeah, they had been friends. He had been in need of friends at this lab, where no one but Horatio had really been nice and supporting. Until the moment where his evidence had cleared Calleigh's dad. Since then, she had been supportive too. Until… yeah, until when? When did it change? With his gambling at Death Pool. Yeah, nice enough. He had a problem, okay. No, it was not a problem. It was a fucking addiction. She hadn't known back then, it only came to light with the Lipton incident. Since then, she had never completely regained trust in him again. She had judged him, for something that got out of hand. He couldn't believe she still distrusted him for it. She judged him for an impulse control disorder he couldn't fight. And instead of helping him, instead of supporting him, she turned her back on him, back when he had needed her help just as much as she had needed his when her father was in trouble, when she'd been abducted, when she'd almost died in that bloody fire! Well, if they all didn't move a fucking finger to help him now, he would remember it.

**Here's what I have to say****:**

**I was left to cry there  
Waiting outside there  
Grinning with a lost stare  
That's when I decided...**

This was worse. This was worse than last year. He had to smile bitterly. It had been one year since that that terrible night where the Russian had broken him. Nothing had improved. He still felt the gap in his mouth everyday when his tongue accidentally touched it. Every look into the mirror reminded him of that morning in the bathroom where he had looked at his abused face and known that never ever again could he look into the mirror and not remember it. And nobody had cared.

**Why should I care****?  
Cause you weren't there  
When I was scared  
I was so alone…. **

Why did he even care? Why didn't he just go to work, do his job, go home and forget his team? They probably did the same. He had no evidence that proved the opposite. Nobody ever came to his home looking for him that time after a nail had almost destroyed his whole life. Okay, he hadn't talked to anybody about his vision trouble. Still, did they think it would just 'go away'? And they had noticed something. Again. Calleigh and Alexx. Alexx had even done something. She had done what she could. But the others? No. Everything was just about the cases, about how his vision trouble could endanger an investigation. Nobody had ever thought of how he felt when he feared he could lose his vision. A life living in darkness, but oh, who cared if work was done properly? Which he had done, despite the ever present fear his eye could refuse its service any second. But he hadn't even gotten a 'Thank you', let alone a 'Can I help you?'. At night he was lying in his bed alone, knowing that he could wake up the next morning with only one eye left. But they hadn't cared. Nobody but Alexx had cared. And now, as he was sitting in this holding cell, he noticed more than ever before that Alexx was not here anymore.

**You need to listen  
I'm starting to trip  
I'm losing my grip  
And I'm in this thing alone**

He had often wondered if things would have turned out differently if his team had showed him the same friendship when he started as they now showed Jesse. Maybe, if he had friends here, he wouldn't even have had to resort to gambling. But really, there was no point in blaming them. He knew well enough that it was his own fault. He should have never started in the first place. But he was so alone sometimes… he had needed something to take his mind off the feeling of being underappreciated. For someone like Ryan, who had always been on his own with his stuff, it was a terrible feeling. To not be good enough. And here, in this team, the feeling was there 24/7. He didn't know why he had the urgent desire to go and gamble. Probably because it was in his blood. Probably because he needed some thrill in his life. Probably because he wanted to overshadow the feeling of loneliness with the joy of winning money. He had known, the first time he'd lost a huge amount of money, that there was a downside. But that happened during the time Delko had been shot. Where again he was all alone dealing with the fear for the life of his colleague. He hadn't been able to stop it anymore. It had been, until then, the worst time of his life. First, the feeling of being completely broke. Later, the feeling of not being worth a damn thing, back when he was unemployed. He would never forget the joy he felt when Horatio had called, only to find out he wasn't getting his job back, but he was supposed to babysit a teenager. Which he had done, because he couldn't possibly leave the girl on her own. But sometimes during that period, he had sat at home, with no perspective whatsoever, and sometimes he had felt like there was no chance of ever getting control back. The control he needed so much.

**Am I just some chick  
You placed beside you  
To take somebody's place  
When you turn around  
Can you recognize my face **

Ryan opened his eyes again. No, the bars were still there. It was not a dream. And worse, none of his team was around to see if everything was alright. Figures. If this was Delko, they would be cradling around that cage, everybody trying to caress his hand. Or, if this was Speedle sitting here, the Nearly Headless Nick of the Miami Dade Crime Lab, Delko would have already broken the door open with a god damn crowbar to get his friend out! But no, he was all alone. He couldn't believe it. Five goddamn years, and still he was only the replacement. Ryan Wolfe, CSI, replacement of Tim Speedle. That was his identity to all of them. Except of course for Natalia, who never had the chance to know Speedle. But then again, she wasn't here either. Well, she might be looking for something to clear him. He could imagine that Natalia, and maybe Walter, were trying their best to find out the truth. But they had never known Speedle. If they had, they probably wouldn't care either.

**You used to love me  
You used to hug me  
But that wasn't the case  
Everything wasn't ok**

He licked his lips and got up, paced the cell. He couldn't just sit there. Ever since that Russian had done what he did to him, he had trouble sitting in one place for too long. It reminded him too much of the chair. Everything reminded him of that goddamn chair. Especially the feeling of being captured again. The handcuffs earlier… they hadn't even been that tight, and still, it felt like they were still there, burning into his flesh. Like the duct tape had done. If he just looked at his hands for long enough, he could still see it. And then this goddamn cell. He was being locked up. Again. Okay, he could be sure no one would come and beat him up in here. He sat down again, got up again.

**I was left to cry there  
Waiting outside there  
Grinning with a lost stare  
That's when I decided...**

**Why should I care  
Cause you weren't there  
When I was scared  
I was so alone **

Who would've thought it would be so hard to get over it? As a cop, you prepare for situations like this. For situations where you have to fear for your own life. For situations where you'll get hurt. But Jesus Christ, no one had ever told him how to handle so much pain. He was trembling now. Every single punch the Russian had dealt him came back to his mind. He had held up. He had done a good job in hiding his pain and fear from the one who caused it. But he couldn't hide it from himself. Right now, the pain he had felt a year ago hit him with all its power. He could even hear himself screaming out in pain. He could hear himself yelling_ GO TO HELL! _He could hear himself begging _No, no, stop_ when the Russian had approached him with pliers. He had never felt such an intense fear before. He had hoped so much for one of the team to look for him. But he had been alone. Alone when the Russian had tortured him. He had been scared to death, not knowing whether he would survive. And he had been scared for Billy's life. But no one had felt how scared he was. _And they call themselves CSIs._ He had been all alone, with nobody around to hold his hand when he had been scared.

**You need to listen  
I'm starting to trip  
I'm losing my grip  
And I'm in this thing alone**

**Crying out loud  
I'm crying out loud  
Crying out loud  
I'm crying out loud**

**Open your eyes  
Open up wide**

He rested his head against the bars, his hands holding them so tightly it hurt. He banged his head against the bars. Slowly, but repeatedly. Why hadn't they seen it? He would have loved to yell at them, ordering them to open their eyes so that they could see what was going on. But that just wasn't in his nature. He would have been the happiest person ever if Calleigh had come to him, holding his hand and saying in her cheerful voice, "Come on, Ryan, we will make it. We'll get through this together_._" He would have grinned if Eric had told him, "Well, don't worry about that tooth. Can't spoil that ugly face anyways_._" He would have done anything to see Alexx open his door and say "And you will put that icepack to your lip now if you don't want me to put your head in a bucket of cold water."Hell, anything that showed him he wasn't alone to face the Russians when he had. But he had been alone. Like warriors in ancient stories. And like them, he hadn't been able to cry. Crying had never been for him. And he had some good reasons to cry after all. About his life which, as of now, wasn't worth a penny.

**Why should I care  
Cause you weren't there  
When I was scared  
I was so alone **

_He was being locked up. Again. Okay, he could be sure no one would come and beat him up__ in here._ But for how long? If this turned out worst case scenario, he would be locked up for much longer than he could possibly imagine. What worth was his life in prison? Being a cop was worse enough. They would trash him for it. And of course, there were people in prison that Ryan had brought there himself. Memmo Fierro. Walter Resden. Michael Lipton. Many of Sarnoff's people. Geez, he could be lucky if death was short and painless. And again, no one was here to tell him "Don't worry, Ryan, we know you're innocent, you won't go to jail!" They just looked at him like they were dead certain he had really done it. Except for Walter and Natalia. He had noticed their looks. He hoped that those two just weren't here because they were working to clear him. He sat down again and closed his eyes. If he went to jail, he would face the worst pain of his life. He didn't allow himself any illusions. Life in jail was bad enough as it was. But being a cop… He swallowed. _If I make it a day without anything happening, I can consider myself happy._ He just couldn't go through this again. More pain, more scars. No, it simply couldn't happen. This HAD to be a nightmare. Soon, he would wake up. _Come on, Ryan. Wake up! No, you won't wake up, because this is reality. They're gonna book you for murder. You'll end up between the people you brought to jail yourself. They'll trash you. They'll even do worse to you. Soon, you'll wish you were back with the Russian because at least he didn't do THAT to you. Please, God, let something happen. Send some sort of a Guardian Angel to get me out of here…_

**Why should I care  
If you don't care  
then I don't care****  
We're not goin anywhere **

He opened his eyes again and raised his head, just in time to see Frank Tripp coming around the corner. _Yeah, God, I always knew you were a funny kid… _But then Frank looked at him, nodded, and waved at him to get up. Ryan did.

As Frank opened the door, Ryan asked him, "You're gonna bring me to the dressing room? Give me an orange suit?"

"Yeah, right, buddy. Orange ain't really your colour."

Ryan stopped dead in his tracks, "You're serious? I'm out?"

Frank nodded, "Thanks to Natalia. You might wanna think of inviting her to a fancy dinner for this."

He felt the weight being lifted from his heart, "So, they found out what happened? They found out who framed me?"

"Yeah. And you're not gonna believe who did it. This is so absurd, if this was a TV show, the ratings would drop."

* * *

**Jag_Lady, this last line is for you. I am so sorry for what they did to Rick. I was never a Stetler fan, but he added something to the show. And DLS was a fantastic actor who deserved so much better. **

**Thank you for reading and reviewing. Love and peace, fergie. Over and out!  
**


End file.
